What was once typically seen as a second-choice cover crop is now the main commodity for an increasing number of farmers, and demand doesn’t seem to be letting down.

Sorghum probably won’t take over cotton’s top spot in the South Plains, but it's significantly rising in planted acreage.

“There was a lot more planted this year as a primary crop,” said Jay Yates, an agricultural economist for Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

Texas’ 2.7 million acres of sorghum planted for all purposes in 2013 showed an approximately 17 percent increase from the number planted the year before.

A big reason is ethanol production.

U.S. biofuel mandates have increased every year since 2007 — but will stabilize beginning in 2015, at least as far as for conventional biofuel — and need for the high-proof, water-like liquid used as a main component is rising right along with them.

Fryar said his company grinds about 40,000 bushels of sorghum each day to produce about 115,000 gallons of ethanol.

The process begins with a weight and moisture-content analysis by Diamond Ethanol’s quality-control department of the grain when it arrives in shipments on the north side of the plant.

The next steps involve grinding the analyzed sorghum into flour and combining it with water into a tank — where it's cooked to produce enzymes — then transferring it to holding and liquification tanks.

After it's cooked, cooled and fermented, staff from the plant’s laboratory test samples to determine if the yeast in the product has effectively consumed the sugar and produced the finished product.

And after the ethanol is created, its coproducts — wet distiller’s grain and dry distiller’s grain — go through a different process before they are eventually marketed as feed grain.

And from the agricultural-production side, success in the ethanol market also means good news for growers of the grain that eventually becomes a main ingredient in gasoline, alcoholic beverages, feedstock, certain types of medicine and more.

Yates notes the number of farmers who have picked up on the sorghum demand are eager to contribute on the supply side.

“This year, (profit) has been either equal or slightly above,” he said.

Equipment costs related to farming cotton and sorghum are about the same, Yates said, but a sorghum-harvesting combine is likely to be able to collect more acreage than a cotton stripper.

Furthermore, even the most devoted cotton farmer can benefit from an at-least-occasional crop rotation. Growing cotton for multiple seasons in a row can make the soil more prone to certain diseases, a problem that can sometimes be resolved with a commodity-switch the next planting season.

“Just giving the soil a break and planting something different really helps the next year,” Yates said.